What Came First, the Chicken or the Potato? Apparently, the Potato Tastes Like Chicken

A potato that tastes like roast chicken just dropped. No chicken, no seasoning, no kitchen trickery. Just a potato with poultry ambitions. Meet Poulette, a new variety developed by Row 7 with Cornell University. Chefs describe its savoury flavour as remarkably similar to roast chicken. I thought we’d seen everything in the potato department, but apparently this spud has other plans. What’s next, an egg that tastes like French fries?

Poulette wasn’t created overnight. Its development began with a cross between a rare French heirloom potato, Institut de Beauvais, and a Cornell breeding line in 2014. After years of growing and selecting, the result is a potato with an unusual roasted, savoury character. Even the people behind it haven’t fully explained why it tastes that way. Of course, flavour is subjective, so the real test is getting one onto a dinner plate.

And that brings us to the big question: what came first, the chicken or the potato? The potato wins by a landslide. People were cultivating potatoes in the Andes thousands of years before domestic chickens appeared. So the humble spud was already on the menu long before poultry entered the picture. There’s something wonderfully fitting about a potato that now reminds people of roast chicken.

Poulette takes its name from the French word for a young hen. Now we’re just waiting for an egg that tastes like a French fry. I’ll also be keeping an eye out for a poutine-flavoured potato. Gravy, cheese curds and potato in one glorious package? That’s a spud I’d line up for!